Though I Could Not Stop For Death / Death Kindly Stopped For Me
Chapter Two: Glimpses and Insights
The good thing about being one of the lead-- and only if he was honest with himself-- researchers on the effects of ectoplasmic energy and radiation on the human realm was that the United States government was willing to bypass certain things in order to keep the Fenton’s continued cooperation and research firmly under their sponsorship. For instance, the favor they’d called in to help set up an identity and fast-track an adoption for the boy they’d found in the alley.
Upon discovering the boy, they had taken him in, patched him up, and put him up for the night in their guest room, immediately contacting CPS to inform them of what they’d found. The poor boy had a scar in the center of his chest, inches below his heart, with bruised skin surrounding the area. That wasn’t the only scar he carried, but the most immediate one-- it looked like it had only barely healed over, tissue still angry and red. The agency had instructed them to take him to the hospital first thing, where they found out the boy… effectively did not exist.
He wasn’t listed in any databases. No fingerprints, no registration of his birth, no known parents in the system. For all they could tell, he’d never even been in a hospital.
He also made it difficult as all hell to get any information. When he first spoke, he only spoke in Arabic, and the hospital had to bring in a translator. His name was Danyal, he had no last name, and did not know where he was or how he’d gotten there. When the nurse attempted to draw his blood, he’d almost bit her before the translator explained. Even then, it took a demonstration and explanation to prove that it would not be detrimental to him before he allowed it.
Jasmine, though… well. She’d taken one look at the boy in the alley and claimed him as her own. At ten years old, she’d plopped herself down on Danyal’s hospital bed, damn the consequences, and started chattering away, talking about anything and everything-- what she’d learned in school, her friend James who’d dyed his hair recently, the new family who’d moved in a few weeks back. And surprisingly, Danyal listened. Attentively. He’d slowly begun asking halting questions back, his voice hardly above a whisper, but in fluent English.
Jack shook his head, signing his signature on another piece of paperwork before flipping the page. As they had been first contact, and the boy had nowhere else to go after a test discovered the low level of ectoplasmic radiation clinging to him… The Fentons were approved for an emergency fostering situation after passing their inspections. Who else was equipped to keep an eye on his radiation levels? That was part of the whole reason the Fentons had set up shop in Amity Park, Illinois. Their social worker, however, had been very insistent that Danyal not have anything to do with their research other than monitoring his ectoplasmic levels, and the Fentons had readily agreed. They still had to take a course on trauma-informed care for parenting-- Danyal had been through so much, the extent of which they likely would never know. Their caseworker, a kind woman named Katherine, had explained that while Danyal knew English and could speak it fluently, they suspected it to be his second language. It would take time and lots of trust before he would open up and relax around them.
But… in the brief few weeks they’d spent together, Danyal had already captured his way into their hearts. Jazz nicknamed him Danny after they’d spent an afternoon trying to pronounce his name. She’d almost had it, from what Jack gathered, but she was missing the lilt to the end of the name that just. Could not be fixed. Despite hours of trying. So, Danny had eventually given up and given in to the nickname.
Jack rubbed his eyes, set his pen down as he got up from the desk. It was about time when the kids would be going to bed, and so he started the nightly routine that had recently expanded-- visit Jazz’s room first on the second floor, as it was closer to the stairwell, tuck her in and tell her good night as he turned down the lights. She liked to stay up reading with a light under her covers, so in about an hour, Mads would come by and do the same, telling her to go to sleep for real this time.
This time, however… Jazz’s bed was empty. Jack blinked in confusion, then glanced down the hall.
---
“Maddie, oh my God, you need to come look at this,” her husband whispered urgently from the stairs. Maddie looked up, one eyebrow raising as she marked her page with a bookmark and set the textbook aside.
“What is it?”
“Just-- come up here-- quiet, I don’t want to wake them up.”
She blinked, then smiled softly as she crept up the stairs, sneaking down the hallway to the open door of Danny’s room. The overhead light was off, but the lamp was still on, giving them a perfect view.
Danny was curled up in a little ball, snuggled right up into Jazz, her arms around him, one resting on a book on their legs. The light played with the shadows on their faces, the relaxed expressions showing their ages of eight and ten.
Maddie couldn’t help the squeal she muffled with her hand.
In her defense? It was adorable.
Though she did immediately regret it as Danny’s eyes snapped open, bright blue focusing on them both. She froze, lowering her hands from her mouth to show her soft smile, knowing that Jack was almost certainly smiling as well.
And somehow… that seemed to be enough for him. A few owlish blinks before the corner of his lips turned up, just a little, before he snuggled back into Jazz and closed his eyes.
Oh, how Maddie wished she had a camera.
---
Over time, the collection of photos lining the walls of the Fenton house grew. Danny’s first day of school, once his therapist had said he was adjusted enough to go, and that it would be beneficial to his development. The first time they’d gone out together as a family. The first summer fair. Danny and Madeline training together, after they’d realized the other had self-defense training.
Danny was ten, now. Acclimating to his new life had been… weird. It was weird being away from the League, not knowing… everything about how he’d gotten here.
He remembered dying. That was hard to forget, honestly-- letting himself falter, letting Damian survive at his own expense. Mother’s cries as he faded, Damian sobbing and apologizing.
Damian.
His thoughts often wondered to his little brother (by two minutes, Damian liked to protest), worried about how he had grown. If he had grown at all. They weren’t the first Heirs to the Demon Head, after all. Simply the ones who were the most useful. Their father had been a prospective Heir, but turned Grandfather down.
Danyal wondered how he had managed to get away alive after that. Ra’s didn’t take “no” for an answer very well.
A tap on his knee, and Danny looked up at unfamiliar violet eyes, way too close to his space. His shoulders tensed as he leaned back, furrowing his eyebrows. “Can I… help you?”
The girl, probably his age give or take a year, had plopped herself down at the picnic table in the elementary school playground and had taken to watching him. “You’re different,” she proclaimed after a moment’s consideration. “You’re not like Paulina or the others. What’s your name?”
“Danny,” he answered. “Why? And what do you mean, I’m different?”
“I don’t know.” The girl sighed sharply, looking at the other kids playing around. Even from here, on one of his first days, Danny could just tell the cliques being formed. They’d be going into middle school, soon, but, well. People had their groups of friends, and Danyal was content being the observer on the sidelines, gathering information. That was what he was best at, watching and observing, collecting intel for missions.
“Well, that’s not an answer.” He shrugged and looked back at the homework on the table in front of him, idly writing in some of the answers. Multiplying fractions by whole numbers, honestly. Boring.
“It’s the answer I have. Anyway, my name’s Sam,” she continued. “You’re new, aren’t you? The new Fenton kid that got adopted, right? My mom was talking about you, I think, to Paulina’s dad. It’s nice that they adopted you.”
He had to hold back the urge to roll his eyes. “Sam isn’t a proper name.”
“Neither is Danny,” she shot back.
Alright, he had to give her that. A smile tugged at the edge of his mouth as he set his pencil down, shifting to look at her. “Okay, that’s fair. Yes, the Fentons adopted me two years ago. Yes, I’m new, I had a lot to work through before I could attend school. Do you have any other questions?”
Sam blinked, confusion flitting across her face at the businesslike tone he took. “Oh, um… Do you wanna be friends?”
“Friends?”
“Yeah, like. We can have playdates and do homework and stuff. Mom keeps telling me I need to make more friends, and Paulina’s been getting weird lately, so… Friends!”
“...I suppose it wouldn’t hurt. Jasmine is encouraging me to have friends as well.” He held his hand out for her to shake.
---
Danny was growing up pretty well, if Jazz said so herself. Oh sure, their family was absolutely insane even at the best of times. Sure, she was a sophomore in high school now, but… seeing how much work Danny’s social worker and therapists had done, how much they’d accomplished together, it made her want to help kids like they’d helped her brother.
She spotted the moment he realized she was watching him, his shoulders tensing almost imperceptibly until he met her gaze. Play it off, she’s not staring, not at all. Jazz got up, moving over to the kitchen table where Danny had previously been staring at the page in some… form of disgust mixed with annoyance.
“Hello, little brother,” Jazz giggled, wrapping her arm around his shoulders. “Should I offer to help you with your homework, considering you look like you want to set it on fire?”
“Jazz, this paper is literally going to kill me,” he groaned as he rubbed his face, pencil clattering onto the paper. “It’s just-- it’s so boring! I understand why we should learn how to predict events and how to prepare for them, but I learned how to do that before I learned to talk.”
“You should take that test to go into a higher grade,” Jazz encouraged. “I did it! And really, it’s so much more interesting. I get to take astronomy classes, I know you want to work for NASA when we’re grownups.”
“I know, I know,” Danny hummed. “But my therapist says it would be ‘detrimental to my development as a growing teenage boy coming from my background’,” he drawled, his voice completely monotone, drawing a laugh out of his big sister. “They act like I’m a feral kid, honestly.”
“You tried to bite your nurses when we first took you to the hospital. And the nurses when you got your vaccines. And your fifth grade teacher--”
“Okay, okay! Maybe I was a little feral,” Danny gave in.
---
He really hasn’t changed, has he? Jazz thought to herself from her perch on the top of a building, watching her little brother go apeshit on Skulker. Danny was fifteen now, and…
Her little brother was a superhero. Well, Danny liked to deflect, call himself a ‘vigilante at best’, but… well. They knew better, really. He’d done some awesome things, and she meant that in the Biblical sense of “awesome”-- truly awe-inspiring things that, if it were anyone else… well, they’d probably be a little concerned. Danny, though?
Danny was probably one of the genuinely kindest people she ever knew. Apparently, after his big defeat of Pariah Dark, Clockwork had taken him aside and talked about what that really meant, to defeat the High King of Ghosts in one-to-one combat. The Infinite Realms worked on a hierarchy of power, after all.
Which meant that on top of his duties as a vigilante superhero, and having just finished his sophomore year, Danny was also being tagged in for High Prince of Ghosts duties. Which, apparently, included acting as a psychopomp in some situations, albeit with quite a bit more ass-kicking.
As she watched Danny give Skulker one hell of a roundhouse kick, it felt like… her perspective of reality blurred. One minute they were in the sky, the next, Danny was floating in front of her with a paper in hand, Skulker nowhere to be seen. So really, you could hardly hold her responsible for the sharp jump and yelp, reaching out to sock him in the shoulder. “Danny! Don’t do that, I thought you were fighting-!”
Danny let his shoulder go intangible with a laugh, patting her on the shoulder. “It’s okay, Jazz. It… we need to have a talk with the rest of the gang, hold on a sec.” He tapped the communicator in his ear. “Phantom to team, come in team.”
“Here, as always,” Tucker’s voice buzzed, followed quickly by Sam’s agreement.
“Cutting patrol short tonight, guys,” he hummed, wrapping his arm around Jazz’s waist as they took off into the air. “Let’s meet back up at my place and talk-- seems we’ve got a letter from good ol’ Clocky.”
“Oh, Ancients,” Sam sighed. “Can we not get one normal summer?”
“Redundant question, sorry, Danny,” Tucker apologized.
“Don’t worry about it, guys-- let’s just get back and talk.”
---
“I’m sorry, he wants you to do what?!” Sam whisper-yelled, a throw pillow clutched tightly against her chest. “Danny, you’ve got to be joking. You can’t just… you can’t just tell your parents. I mean, what are they going to think?”
Danny rubbed the back of his neck. “Look, he’s the Master of All Time. If he says that this is probably the best time to tell them, because I’m needed for Prince of the Realms stuff this summer, then that’s probably in my best interest to listen to him,” he argued, tucking a knee to his chest. “Just… look, I just need you guys to be there with me when I tell them. It’s not like I can just burst out of the gate with it.”
“And, y’know, Mom and Dad have gotten a lot better, lately,” Jazz mused. “They’re really focusing on the science of what they’re doing instead of just… building weapons for ghost hunting. I think they took my lecture on being researchers to heart.”
Danny raised an eyebrow. “You screamed at them for a solid hour.”
“It was a lecture!”
“Not to be the voice of reason here or anything,” Tucker cut in, “but… I have to agree with Danny, Sam. Clockwork hasn’t guided us wrong yet, and technically, Danny’s his boss now, so I don’t think he wants to see him go power-crazy. Especially not after all that crap last time.”
Danny winced. “Really, just. Salt in that wound, huh?”
“Sorry man. But seriously, we just… sit them down and break out the powerpoint we made. We can all take turns explaining it,” Tucker reasoned. “And besides, where he goes, we go anyway.”
Sam huffed. “Fine. But I’m keeping my armor on standby.”
Danny grinned. “Thanks, guys. Now, we should plan for it this weekend, so we can start planning the summer trip…”
----
All things considered? Telling the Fentons was… a whole lot less screaming and accusations than Danny halfway expected. They took the information calmly, watching the presentation the teenagers gave-- and really, it was a damn good presentation. They’d gotten scans from Frostbite about Danny’s biology, his DNA, and how his long-term exposure to ectoplasmic radiation had protected him from straight up dying in the portal accident. How the Realms had saved him as much as it killed him. How he’d spent so much goddamn time, blood sweat and tears keeping the city, the world safe from their own little brand of cosmic horrors.
How they’d learned that fighting was how ghosts socialized, so they set up ways to keep it from being destructive on Danny’s grades and the town itself.
Their parents were… shocked, to say the least. But at their hearts, they were scientists. Scientists that had been fed lies and bigotry about ghosts in a field where they didn’t have the ability, for so long, to prove that bigotry wrong-- and when they did finally have the ability, their want to be proven wrong had long since disappeared. How their bias had been drilled into them by their professors, by their professors, by everyone in the field.
They needed time to reassess. To work through their biases, to… to try to apologize, in some way.
Danny said they didn’t need to apologize.
They insisted.
---
His mission, of course, was hardly put in clear terms. Danny thought that Clockwork just liked to fuck with him, at this point, as his Guardian. He had the right to, or whatever. Regardless, the young ghost just had to stare as Clockwork explained.
“Let me get this straight. You want me to go to Gotham, a place that is notoriously full of crime, murder, and 100% has a supernatural presence, because the City Ghost has said that she’ll make your afterlife miserable if I don't deal with their furry problem?” he said incredulously.
“I hardly said that, Danyal,” Clockwork hummed. “What I said is that Lady Gotham, one of the older City Ghosts on this side of the world, has requested your assistance with your connections to both the living and Infinite realms in regards to a problem with one of her Protectors.”
“...So, the Bats,” Danny grumbled. “Hooray, that’s definitely what I wanted to do this summer. Go into the city that notably hates metas.”
“I hardly think that they will take umbrage with your presence,” Clockwork chuckled, patting his charge’s shoulder. “After all, your father lives in Gotham, does he not?”
Danny rubbed at his face as they floated to the couches that had appeared, the Long Now sensing the wants and needs of its owner. “I guess. That’s kind of… part of the problem, you know? I don’t want to go and see him, and then have to pretend that we’re… I mean, I know he’s my Father. I do. But.. I have enough problems without having to deal with the whole-ass Justice League on my ass, you know?”
“I believe you have less problems than you believe you do,” Clockwork hummed.
Danny narrowed his eyes. “Are you… going to give me a better answer than that?”
“No.”
“Enigmatic bastard.”
“If either of us is a bastard, young Prince, it would be you.”
“You cheeky-!”
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